Endearments
by bingblot
Summary: A short, fluffy one-shot set almost entirely during the time-jump in 6x1, "Valkyrie." "Did you just call me babe?"


_Disclaimer: Still not mine. _

_Author's Note: Because I started thinking about the times Kate called Castle "babe" in canon. Set mostly in early Season 6, "Valkyrie," but with a vague reference to "For Better or Worse" (no, not that part.) Fair warning, this fic is probably so fluffy and light, it should come with a cavity alert. _

**Endearments**

The first time she said it, it just slipped out.

Kate was running late and consequently rushing around trying to get ready for the start of her second week at the AG's office—which was rather his fault for making her late, since he'd, um, persuaded her to linger in the shower for rather longer than she should have.

(But really, what else was he supposed to have done? No red-blooded male could possibly have woken up and walked into the bathroom to find Kate Beckett in the shower and not joined her. It was humanly impossible.)

At any rate, he'd delayed her in getting ready so now she was running late, putting her papers back into their file and trying to shrug into her blazer at the same time once she finished gulping down her coffee and half a bagel.

"I'm making a mess. Do you mind cleaning all this up?"

"I'll take care of it," he assured her immediately. "Go finish getting ready."

She dropped a kiss on his hair in passing. "Thanks, babe."

Wait. _What_ had she just called him?

He reached out and snagged her wrist as she headed away from him. "Did you just call me babe?"

That brought her up short. "Oh." She let out a small laugh. "I guess I did." She bit her lower lip in that way that never failed to drive him crazy from wanting to kiss her. "Do you mind?"

He just kissed her. He loved, absolutely _loved_, that he could kiss her pretty much whenever he wanted to now.

When he drew back, she blinked at him for a couple seconds—and his heart positively danced a jig inside him. God, he loved that his kiss could make Beckett's mind go blank like this.

"You can call me anything you want, Beckett," he assured her.

At that moment, they heard the brief tap of a car horn, the indication that Agent McCord had arrived to pick Beckett up. (He'd teased Beckett about it a couple times, that now she knew what it felt like to be the passenger more often than not.)

"I have to go. See you tonight," Beckett said, once again rushing around to gather up all her things. At the last second, she turned and blew him a quick kiss, along with a smile. "Love you."

"Love you too. And be careful," he said quickly. She was still only in training but it didn't mean he liked knowing she was going out there when he wasn't around to watch her back, even if Agent McCord would be there. He knew Agent McCord was fully capable but it wasn't the same as being there, as knowing for sure with his own eyes whether Kate was all right or not. (Damn, he missed working with her.)

And then she was gone, slipping out the front door of her new place.

_Love you. _

And that was possibly—probably—no, definitely—the best thing about his life, their lives—that Kate was so confident, so settled, in their relationship that she said that so easily, so often. After all this time, after all the ways they had hurt each other, in spite of how guarded and careful Kate still tended to be about some things, she had come so far—_they_ had come so far—that she could tell him she loved him in so many words and the words came easily.

And she'd called him babe.

He grinned and then found himself laughing a little to himself. She had called him babe.

He hadn't known, hadn't thought that Kate was a person who used endearments or pet names. She only called him "kitten" to make fun of him—then again, Meredith had started calling him "kitten" to annoy him—and beyond that, Kate had never called him by a pet name.

As a rule, she still called him Castle. Funny, before they'd gotten together, in his fantasies, she'd almost always called him Rick. It had gotten so that when he heard her call him Rick in real life, his body had reacted instinctively, no matter what her tone had been, before he'd returned to reality. He'd wanted her to call him Rick more. Now—well, now he didn't. He'd found there was something incredibly hot about hearing her call him Castle, by the name he had picked for himself, when they were in bed, when she wanted him, when her voice would go all breathy and urgent with need. _Now, Castle. Yes, Castle. Please, Castle… Castle, I want you. _

Damn it. He shoved the thought, the memories, away. Not a good thing to remember when she had just left for work and he knew there was no way he was seeing her before dinner time tonight.

But she did call him Rick now too, in the quiet moments, the special moments. Come to think of it, she used Rick as an endearment—and he loved the way his name sounded when she said it. (Then again, he loved the way just about everything sounded when she said it.)

And now she'd called him babe.

He grinned.

Beckett wasn't the sort of openly affectionate person who used endearments lightly and often. He seriously doubted she'd ever used them before in any of her previous relationships. But now, with him, she was comfortable enough to call him by a pet name.

Yeah, he definitely liked that she'd called him babe.

Which was odd too, since as a rule, he didn't generally like being called by an endearment—women, his flings, had occasionally called him things like "handsome" and "stud" and "lover-boy" and others and maybe that was why he didn't like being called by endearments; in his experience, they meant less than nothing. His mother calling him "darling" was the only exception to that. And he didn't really use endearments himself with anyone except Alexis. For as long as he could remember, Alexis had been the exception that proved the rule that he didn't use endearments. But with Alexis, using endearments and pet names had come almost as naturally as loving her had. (And honestly, what normal person could resist using pet names around babies and little kids?) So he called her pumpkin and princess (when she'd been much younger, that is) and sweetie and other things throughout her childhood and growing up. He used the pet names much less often now after the death glare she had given him the first couple times he'd slipped up and called her pumpkin in front of her friends when she'd been in high school and he frankly missed being able to call Alexis those pet names, missed it almost as much as he missed the little girl she used to be.

But aside from Alexis, he didn't use endearments.

His mother's endearment of choice was "darling," one she'd picked up on stage as an affectation of sorts, which had stopped being an affectation but simply become part of her. But even his mother only used "darling" with people she truly cared about—meaning him, Alexis, and now Kate too.

He tried to imagine using an endearment for Kate—and wrinkled his nose a little. No, he couldn't really imagine it.

He still habitually called her Beckett—and he, rather like she did, used Kate at other moments, the more personal moments. Calling her Kate was probably the only endearment, of sorts, he used.

He occasionally called her "Detective"—and now "Agent"—mostly to tease her, letting his voice curl around the job title, infusing it with a caress and the promise of more. And he delighted in the way it made her eyes gleam, bringing out glints of green and gold.

And what else could he call her?

"Dear" seemed too… old-fashioned and not strong enough either. "Dearest" at least had more emotion but was still too old-fashioned. "Sweetheart" was one he used to use for Alexis, so that wasn't about to happen. He couldn't imagine calling Kate "babe," never mind that she called him that, if only because it was too close to the "baby" which he'd used to use with Alexis. "Honey" had always struck him as sounding trite.

Hmm. Damn. He was a writer! Surely he should be able to come up with an endearment to call Beckett as a private pet name just between them.

Some of the more stereotypical pet names for women paraded through his mind—"cutie pie," "honeybun," "sugar," and so on—and he laughed aloud. They were so… infantilizing and more than a little patronizing. And he was in love with a cop, or a former cop, and now a federal agent. Who carried a gun. Yeah, he wasn't suicidal or stupid.

"Beloved." A line of poetry from the Song of Solomon flitted through his head. _My beloved is mine and I am his. _He was certainly hers. That one appealed to the writer in him but he couldn't really imagine saying it out loud.

"Dear heart." "Heart's dearest." He suddenly remembered the case of the little girl who'd been kidnapped all those years ago, the case that had brought Sorenson back into Beckett's life, and what the father had called the little girl when he'd seen her again. _Mi corazon. My heart. _

All accurate descriptions of what Kate was to him, of course, but he still couldn't imagine calling her anything like that aloud.

He shook his head. He was being silly, standing here in the middle of Beckett's kitchen, wondering about endearments. He pushed it out of his mind as he busied himself cleaning up the dishes from breakfast and then spent the day finishing up last-minute edits for "_Raging Storm_" and then unpacking and organizing Beckett's new place a little more since, aside from her bedroom, it was mostly just a mass of boxes still.

He didn't think about endearments again until they were in bed that night, his arm snugly around her naked shoulders, her head resting on his shoulder.

"Good night, babe," she murmured.

_Babe._ There it was again.

"Kate, do you mind that I don't have a pet name for you?" he found himself blurting out—ridiculously.

For a moment, she was silent and then she laughed softly. "What, you mean like calling me 'honey,' or 'sweetie-pie'?"

"You called me babe."

"I did. But I don't know; I never really liked pet names, thought I was too cool for them. When I was really little, my parents used to call me Katie-bear or sometimes Katie-bug."

"Katie-_bug_?"

She laughed softly. "I think my dad started it because it sort of rhymed with ladybug. I used to have this little kids blanket that had a big ladybug on it."

He smiled. He loved these glimpses into her past, loved how easily they came now. Her mother's death still hurt, would always hurt, and he knew Bracken's continued freedom still bothered her, could see it in the way she tensed whenever his name was mentioned (and, unfortunately, Bracken's position and their being in Washington, the place that revolved around politicians like no other city in the country did, meant that his name was heard occasionally). But he loved that she had found a measure of some peace, trusted him enough, to share these little bits of her past with him.

"I ordered my parents to stop calling me either of those names when I was 9, I think."

"Did they stop?"

"No, not immediately, but soon enough. I was getting a little too old for pet names like that."

"Mm. You should have seen the glare Alexis gave me when I called her 'pumpkin' in front of her friends when she was in high school."

"High school, Castle, really? That's way too old to be calling her pumpkin."

"It was habit!" he protested. "And anyway, she grew up too fast."

She laughed softly and turned her head just enough to brush her lips against his shoulder.

"I had an old boyfriend back in college who used to call me Kit-Kat," she said after a moment. "I hated it and told him to stop but he just laughed—I think he thought I was joking about not liking the name."

"I won't call you Kit-Kat," he promised.

She laughed a little and lifted her head to drop a quick kiss on his lips. "You can call me whatever you want, Castle, as long as it means you're mine."

His heart stopped and then swooned inside him before dancing around. (Mental note, a cardiologist would hate the effect Kate had on him.) He would never ever get used to Kate saying things like this, claiming him. He tightened his arm around her. "Mm, I like the sound of that. And I am yours, just like you're mine. _My_ Kate."

"My Rick," she returned quietly, so softly he almost had to strain to hear it.

Yeah, maybe that was the best endearment of all, the only one he needed. _My Kate. _His. Kate. And that seemed fitting. For so long, the four letters of her name had seemed like the sum total of all he wanted in the world, the dream of his life. The name that lived in his fantasies, whispered in his dreams, haunted his nightmares. _Kate. _For all that she was to him—muse, inspiration, friend, torment, dream, partner, lover… For all the things that she was—beautiful, extraordinary, frustrating, challenging, comforting, thrilling, sexy, adorable. _Kate._ And all he wanted her to be.

His Kate. _His._ It was what he'd dreamed of, what he'd wanted for her—after the wall had come down, after she'd found the real relationship she wanted, to be confident and happy and secure in her life, in her love, with him. It had taken some time but now, after all they'd been through, they were here and she was his. Fully, completely, confidently his—just as he was hers. _His Kate. _

She was falling asleep, he could tell. He could feel it in the way her breathing slowed, the way her body settled more heavily against him.

He closed his eyes, letting himself drift off along with her.

But at the last second when he was drifting between sleep and consciousness, a vague murmur reached his ears, slid smoothly into the beginnings of unconsciousness. "Love you."

And even in his sleep, he swore he smiled.

Finally, more than a year later, he found an endearment he wanted to call her. An endearment that worked, that suited her, and did justice to all that she was to him and all that he wanted her to be, for always.

He stirred, his eyes still closed, his arm automatically reaching out and tugging the warm, familiar body sharing his bed closer to him. His hand and then his lips found her bare shoulder.

He heard a soft, protesting mumble. "Mmf."

He smiled against her skin. "Good morning, wife."

_~The End~_

_Author's Note 2: It occurred to me that we don't hear Castle using endearments with Kate; she calls him "babe" but he calls her "Beckett" and "Kate" still—although I love when he calls her "Kate." So this is my attempt at exploring that. _

_As always, thank you for reading! _


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